with a gentle heart and blood like fire
by Gray Doll
Summary: "This is how queens are made." Daenerys Targaryen becomes Queen of Westeros, with Jon Snow, Aegon Targaryen and Ser Jorah by her side, and her father's blood burning in her veins.


**with a gentle heart and blood like fire**

Daenerys Targaryen becomes Queen of Westeros near the end of winter, the beginning of one of the shortest summers the Kingdoms have ever seen.

She lands in pomp and grandeur, silver hair flying about her face like a blazing halo and she's aware of the blood still dripping like rubies from Drogon's teeth. Her three dragons kick up huge plumes of dirt and burnt leaves as they descent, and somewhere to her right, Aegon gives a laugh and prepares to dismount Viserion. Somewhere to her right, Jon is still clinging tight to Rhaegal's scales. _The dragon has three heads_.

Her army stands as one, poised and with minimal losses, thousands and thousands of Unsullied, sellswords, former slaves she once freed and Westerosi men who rallied to her side when her ships neared King's Landing. They all have smiles on their faces and their eyes are filled with awe as they watch the three conquerors climb down from the hissing beasts and then move to stand together, their hands almost touching, their faces storm beaten but bright against the remnants of the huge fire that burnt the Lannister and Baratheon armies like wooden toys.

All are hushed as the young woman and the two young men survey their conquest, and even the dragons seem to have gone still, time itself seems to have stopped.

Then the crowds erupt.

"Daenerys!" they cry, and lift their spears to the skies. "Aegon!" they chant, "Jon!" and their voices make Drogon spread his wings, like bloody banners against the golden blue of the sky, and let out a roar that muffles the crowd's chants – a roar that marks the beginning of the new Targaryen reign.

* * *

Aegon is given the seas and islands; Jon, naturally, rides with a force of thousands and thousands of men to rule the North in the name of the Starks with his auburn-haired sister (and the huge man with the half-burnt face she can't seem to be parted from). Daenerys stays in King's Landing with her dragons, builds her fire-breathing children a dome twice the size of all the city's buildings put together, and rules with Jorah Mormont as her Hand and Ser Barristan Selmy as Lord Commander of her Queensguard.

The ices melt and the rains become sparse; in the summer, the roses in her gardens bloom like pinpricks of blood, and the world is a blur of color – green grass, golden fields, the sky as blue as Ser Jorah's eyes. She visits the far provinces of her vast kingdom, hands apples from the royal gardens to children with bright eyes and wide grins; she inspects the growing crops and the land rejoices in her name.

"The land is alive again," the smallfolk murmurs in the countryside and the nobles bring her tales of statues erected in her honor, of festivals held where hundreds pray for her well-being. "You have cured us of the war, and you have brought peace and prosperity."

It is a curious thing, to sit where her father had once sat, the sharp steel of the melted down swords digging into her soft flesh whenever she touches the arms of the throne. The court fills with color, the sun streaming through the high glass windows and bathing the palace in gold, but on odd mornings Daenerys makes her way down the length of the court, and feels the hair on the back of her neck rise; she thinks that some part of her will always be more suited to the vast grass fields of the Dothraki, the dying dirt of the Red Waste, the teal sea surrounding Qarth, the endless dust-paved routes of Slaver's Bay, the craggy mountaintops where she once fled on Drogon's back. Some part of her will always be wild, on the run.

She likes spending the early hours of the morning, when the city is still asleep, in her children's gigantic glass house, watching them fly around their given space and fight over corpses of lambs and boars. Sometimes though she can't bring herself to go there, can't bring herself to accept that her children will never be able to fly free again, will not grow larger, will not know anything else beyond their large prison.

The nobles of her court tell her she should not sadden herself with such thoughts – that dragons are wild, untamed things that cannot be left loose on the world. As though she does not know.

"They want you to marry," Ser Jorah says to her on a hot summer's night, months and months' travels away from the makeshift tents in the Dothraki sea. Her has an odd way of looking at her now, different than all those times she's caught him staring at her longingly; it's too unblinking and too steady now, as if she is going to fade away if he looks anywhere else for a moment. "Your people are talking in your courts. They say that you have to have a husband to command the armies."

She is brushing her hair; _silver and like cloths of silk_, everyone says. "Are they, now?" she asks, half-amused. "I recall that the army has fared quite well several times without a husband at the forefront."

His mouth quirks. "Ah, Khaleesi," he says, after so many years he still calls her that when they're alone (and she cannot bring herself to tell him to stop it). "Sometimes I forget how young you are."

She threads her fingers through the mass of silver silk of her hair, starts pulling it into a long braid for sleep. She prefers doing that alone, now, and has handmaids only for her dressing. "Young?" she repeats, arching an eyebrow. "You keep saying that, my Ser Jorah, and yet I am Queen. Khaleesi, and Breaker of Chains, and Mother of Dragons. I have conquered cities and kingdoms, I have freed slaves and burnt my enemies to the ground." She turns to face him, the amusement now drained from her voice. "I have been married twice; we both know how my two marriages ended. Surely it would be a bad strategy to repeat the same mistakes."

"There are three rulers, Khaleesi – you and your nephews – but only one Iron Throne. No one doubts who sits on it, but you know the laws of the Seven Kingdoms. No woman alone can-"

"The old Seven Kingdoms died along with their lion-tyrants, and so did their laws."

_I cannot give both my heart and mind away_, she thinks, and watches with weary eyes as Jorah bows and exits her chambers. _Ask me for anything else but please – for once, let me keep this much._

* * *

The dragon skulls are in her vaults.

On dark nights, she pads her way down to the dark tunnels, through the echoing halls of the castle down to where the skeletons of the beasts on her banners whisper. She can imagine her father looking up at them when they were still in the throne room, eyes bright with age and pride (and madness, the braver ones say to her), and recall his grand ancestors and revel in the power of the Targaryen dynasty.

Daenerys stands, and stares, clutching her furs closely around her despite the warm summer night, her feet cold on the dark stone. Pale bones stare back at her, blurred and distorted in the weak candlelight, and in this flickering, gasping light they don't look so different from her own children at all.

She thinks what she might do if anyone tried to slay them. Her dragons. Her own blood.

"I will burn them," she whispers. "I will-"

Her voice dies in her throat. She cannot force herself to say the rest.

* * *

The third year after her coronation, the harvest fails, signaling the end of the tortuously brief summer, and the east rises up in revolt.

The messengers race daily into her court, bringing her tales of a lord's speeches to a furious, starving mob. _Your silver queen_, they tell her the man shouts, standing on top of his castle walls, _swathed in her silks and jewels, making her flowers bloom and playing with her dragons as if they're pups; but what of you? What of your crops? If she can bring beasts to life, why does she not feed your starving children?_

"He can't try anything," she says, but a week later he's marching.

She does not sleep. She issues orders for the army to prepare themselves, for the fortifications to be drawn up, for the bowmen to guard the city's walls. Aegon sends five hundred riders and twenty ships to his aunt's aid, and declares the marching easterners traitors; Jon sends her letters about living dead monsters and seething wildlings, says that he cannot send help – rather, he needs it himself.

Daenerys stares into the faces of the men who may very well die tomorrow, and knows that this time she won't ride Drogon and fight by their side. _The city could be ruined if you did that_, her council tells her, and she knows it is true.

"This is what ruling is," the last queen, that golden Cersei, and her merciless father Tywin the traitor, might have said (she knows this from the tales of her nobles). "This is what ruling is," her own father might have also said though in a different tone of voice; and in the dark, lonely hours of the night before the attack Dany feels the dead King drape himself along his daughter's shoulders, dig his way into her very bones. "Burn them all, my child. Burn them all."

When she wakes in the morning, an army is at her gates, her hair is undone and sweat is pasting her gossamer nightgown to her body; Ser Jorah is at her side, a trickle of blood running down his face but his eyes are bright. He helps her up and her handmaids bring her her dress. Once she's ready, she goes out to greet her men.

* * *

When she calls for the traitor lord's head, she does not blink.

"You have betrayed your queen," she tells him, and the courtyard is as silent as death. "You have roused armed forces against the Iron Throne and made attempts at my life. I hereby proclaim you guilty of high treason, the punishment for which is death."

She watches as the King's Justice swings the axe – a clean, easy severance and the deed is done.

The leaders of the rebellion are hanged and quartered, and the surviving soldiers sent home under guard. She tells herself she is just and not cruel; nobody would have done differently. But despite already knowing everything she's done before landing on Westeros, despite knowing of the way she had the Masters killed and sacked cities and let her dragons burn everything in their wake, the peasants speak her name in a different way now; the young queen has survived her first assassination attempt, she has put down her first rebellion. She is no longer a girl on the throne.

They used to call her The Silver Queen. Now they call her The Queen Of Kings.

Daenerys Targaryen, stormborn, mother of dragons, breaker of chains, conqueror, Rhaegar's sister, her father's daughter, pads her way to the vaults at night, and finds that though still she cannot finish the sentence, the mere thought of what she could do to her enemies makes her smile.

* * *

_You have a gentle heart_, Ser Jorah had said to her, so many lifetimes ago. The land has a different pattern now; it breathes in a new way. There is no grass, no dirt, there is glass and stone and marble and gold. _I do not have a gentle heart_, she had answered – snapped – and he had said no more.

If she takes him to her bed, and does not love him as she should, as the songs say, then it will be a fault of hers that must be forgiven. If she does not have a gentle heart, how can she melt it and give it away now, after all the pain it has known? If she does not love her Ser Jorah, if she does not love her Aegon and her Jon, if she does not love anyone but her children, then the Gods must forgive her.

For this is how queens are made.

When she is no longer young but she is still the Queen of Kings, and the White Walkers have been repelled and Jon is living happily with his new wife and his sister with her own husband and ruling the North, there is a new threat in the face of her other nephew.

Aegon leaves his islands with two hundred ships and thousands of men, marching against King's Landing, declaring war against the Queen and demanding the crown for himself. Upon hearing the news, Daenerys only smiles. She turns to her good Ser Jorah and says, very quietly, "let my children loose."

Her nobles are confused, her nobles are frightened, her nobles try to talk her out of such a dangerous idea.

The Queen waves them all away and sits down on her throne made of the melted down swords of her family's enemies, alone in the cold throne room, eyes bright, fixed on the large doors ahead and the sharp steel of the throne's arms digging into her flesh.

She sits, and waits, and thinks, "I will burn them. I will burn them all."

* * *

**Notes:** First Dany fic – I have gone with the R+L=J idea here, and used the 'dragon has three heads' theme and included Aegon. I guess I have always thought Dany as more of a conqueror than a ruler, like she's said it herself, more a khal than a queen, and I think that when it comes to ruling she would eventually lose her 'Rhaegar' traits and be overcome by her 'Aerys' traits. I hope that won't be the case if she does take back the Seven Kingdoms eventually (which I highly doubt at this point, but still), and I still think her teaming up with Jon and Aegon would be great. Oh well. Thank you for reading!


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